The Real Fraud: Second ‘Non-Citizen’ In James O’Keefe Voter Fraud Video Naturalized In 2011

In conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe’s latest video, he features two “non-citizens” who have supposedly committed voter fraud in North Carolina. As ThinkProgress reported yesterday, one of the men, Zbigniew Gorzkowski, has actually been an American citizens for decades.

Now, it turns out that the second “non-citizen,” William Romero, is actually a citizen as well, according to his family.

The video opens with O’Keefe’s cameraman walking up Romero’s driveway and confronting a member of his family about whether he is a citizen. O’Keefe points to court records from 2010 where Romero was excused from jury duty because he was not a citizen at the time. Therefore, as O’Keefe argues, Romero’s voter registration dated December 5, 2011 is fraudulent because Romero “is not a United States citizen.”

Watch it:

In fact, Romero’s family told ThinkProgress he became a naturalized citizen in early 2011.

What’s more, Romero’s family told ThinkProgress that they had began receiving harassing telephone calls two weeks before the incident in the video asking if Romero was a citizen. They confirmed to the caller — it’s unclear whether they were speaking with O’Keefe himself or another individual — that Romero is indeed a citizen. Nevertheless, O’Keefe proceeded to ambush the family at their home and publish this video claiming he’s not a citizen.

One member of his family, who was confronted in O’Keefe’s video as he came home to care for his sick son, was incensed by the charge, calling it “completely absurd.”

O’Keefe appears to have blatantly misled viewers when he declared that Romero “is not a United States citizen” who was therefore committing voter fraud. According to the most recent information, Romero is a citizen who is participating in our most basic democratic right, yet he was attacked and smeared by O’Keefe’s outright falsehoods.